We kick things off today here at The Bits with a brand new History, Legacy & Showmanship column from our own Michael Coate. This time, Michael takes a look back at the Bond film Diamonds Are Forever in honor of the film’s 45th anniversary this year (it was originally released in the U.S. on 12/17/1971). His column features another great roundtable discussion with leading Bond experts and film historians, including Jon Burlingame, John Cork, Bill Desowitz, Lee Pfeiffer, and Bruce Scivally. We certainly hope you enjoy it!

Well... I had a whole plan for today’s post. Sarah and I are both just recovering from this flu that’s going around, and I’ve had a couple days to rest up, so I had a bunch of content I wanted to post here at The Bits today. Then the news that Carrie Fisher has passed away broke.

Now, I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to post any of it this afternoon.

It’s strange the impact that people who you’ve never met can have on your life. I’ve seen Carrie, and all the Star Wars cast, at various conventions, but I’ve never actually met her. Yet it would be difficult to understate the impact her work – not just in Star Wars but The Blues Brothers, When Harry Met Sally, Under the Rainbow, Postcards from the Edge (which she wrote), and so many other great films and TV appearances – has had on me over the years. [Read on here…]

My apologies, but this flu I’ve come down with has gotten worse rather than better today. So I’ve got a release news update for you but that’s about it. Still, there’s definitely some good news to report.

First up, Kino Lorber has set Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944) for Blu-ray release on 3/7. Extras will include audio commentary by film historian Tim Lucas, audio commentary by film professor Drew Casper, The Making of Lifeboat documentary, an animated montage of images, and reversible cover art (the front part of which you can see there on the left). Also coming to Blu-ray on 3/7 from the company is Richard Fleischer’s Compulsion (1959). [Read on here…]

Well, I’ve been fighting it for a few days now but it seems that I’ve finally come down with some kind of flu bug. Damn it. The upside is that I’m spending a lot of time watching movies, so I’m working on more 4K reviews here today.

This is just a quick post to close out the week here at The Bits, but I wanted to chime in this afternoon with my non-spoiler comments about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which I saw last night in RealD 3D (via Barco Laser projection – no IMAX Laser 3D, but it’s good).

First of all, let me say: I really enjoyed the hell out of this film. I actually liked it more than I liked The Force Awakens, and I enjoyed that film too. Rogue One manages a nifty threading of the needle. On the one hand, it has to feel like authentic Star Wars (it certainly does to me) and it has to meet very high fan expectations (it mostly does this for me too). On the other hand, no film can possibly do that for everyone. Every longtime fan has likely imagined the story described in the opening crawl of the original Star Wars, and every one of those fans who is now connected to the film industry in one way or another has probably already directed that movie in their heads. So not everyone is going embrace everything about this film. Yet, it’s still a blast. [Read on here…]

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